Environment committee  Perhaps this is not the forum in which to do this, but we have been talking about risk assessment processes. I think for PBDEs, for example, which have been evaluated by some kind of risk assessment process, now that they're found in the breast tissue of women in Canada at rates higher than are seen in Sweden, it's hardly a ringing endorsement of the risk assessment process.

Environment committee  I was just wondering, Mr. Warawa, if you would forgo the crease in your pants if you knew it was going to affect your grandchild.

Environment committee  I have done some direct research on the impacts of exposure to lead in the community of Belledune, where the province did do blood sampling. Bio-monitoring testing is done, but if you can't correlate it to any symptoms that you might see in these children, it really isn't going to tell you very much.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Inka Milewski and I'm the science adviser for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, one of the three oldest environmental groups in Canada. We are a membership-based organization. With respect to the topic today, vulnerable ecosystems and vulnerable populations, the Conservation Council believes there are two blind spots in CEPA.

Fisheries committee  I have to say I don't know what the current numbers are, but the historic numbers are in this report and from documents.

Fisheries committee  Again, I don't know the current numbers, and I apologize. I can try to get that for you.

Fisheries committee  We have made a request to speak before the environment committee.

Fisheries committee  I absolutely agree. I think you need to ask DFO to come. They are in the process of modernizing their habitat management plan; that process is under way. The question is how that modernization plan would address another proposal like this. Frankly, legally, I don't know what can be done about this project.

Fisheries committee  Exactly. Exactement.

Fisheries committee  You know, it's interesting. They do it on the basis of a sort of risk assessment of hypotheticals, of possibilities, of models. Frankly, they don't have the capacity as a department to really look as broadly and as deeply at some of these issues.

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely.

Fisheries committee  They're based on what has happened historically. A good example is what has happened in the Arctic. If you had asked DFO scientists 20 years ago if they would have imagined that the discharge from power plants in Ontario would deposit mercury, or that there would be deposition of PCBs in the Arctic food chain that would bioaccumulate, they would have said no.

Fisheries committee  We're one of the two oldest environmental groups in the country. We started in 1969. We're a membership-based organization, and we're run by a board of 24 people from across the province. We get our funding partly from our membership, from fundraising activities, through grants from private foundations, grants from federal and provincial government agencies, although we don't get many of those because we don't apply for many.

Fisheries committee  You're absolutely right.

Fisheries committee  Like Monsieur Landry, and as I said, I've been at this as a scientist for 29 years, I don't think I've ever seen such an incredible mobilization of human effort against a development project in an area so sparsely populated, relatively, as I have in Belledune. Two and a half thousand people showed up on a sunny November day to say they were not happy about the way this facility came in, and the process.